Filed to story: Once Upon a One Night Mistake Book PDF Free by Simone Shirazi
“I think it would be hard to beat those,” she murmured as she eyed Jude’s seersucker pants with little pink palm trees on them, causing Sebastian to practically spit out the wine he’d just taken a sip of.
Jude didn’t seem to notice his little outburst. Instead, Jude awkwardly cleared his throat and continued to look Michael up and down from the corner of his eye. “It’s quite a look, I’ll give you that.”
Taliana let out a loud laugh that time, obviously unable to keep it in, but it was enough to steal back Jude’s attention. “We need to talk about this baby,” he said firmly
“Baby?” someone else questioned, and Sebastian glanced over to see Jacob enter the room. “Stick Girl is pregnant?”
“No!” Taliana yelled at the same time Jude shouted, “Yes!”
Jacob turned to Sebastian for an answer instead, seeing as he wasn’t going to get a real one out of either Taliana or Jude.
“We’re not sure,” Sebastian answered calmly, even though he was anything but calm on the inside. “But we’re leaning strongly towards no.”
“You better not be,” Michael warned Taliana as he collapsed into one of the armchairs across from the couch. “Seb’s not ready to be a daddy.”
Sebastian grunted in agreement as he downed his wine. In no way was he ready to be a father, nor did he want to be one, especially if the kid’s mother was Taliana. He was praying to every deity that he hadn’t knocked her up.
“I’m not ready to be a mother either,” she responded as she kicked off her high heels. “The thought of squeezing something the size of a watermelon out of my bits doesn’t really sound like fun, and I have no plans to do it.” She shuddered slightly before rising to her feet. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get something to drink.”
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Jude shouted, grabbing her arm. “I bought a pregnancy test, and I’m making you take it!”
Before Sebastian knew what was happening, Jude was dragging Taliana off, the two bickering the entire way.
“I like her,” Michael admitted when they had disappeared around the corner. “She’s not so bad when she’s not trying to commit murder.”
Sebastian found his fingers absentmindedly stroking the scars on his arm. “Yeah, tell me about it.”
“I think we’ll all get along fine,” Marcus said, though he was quick to frown. “But tell me one more time how you expect all of this to work out?”
Sebastian once again explained the entire fake-dating scheme to his friends, answering their questions and attempting to assuage their concerns-the biggest of which was are you sure she’s not going to try to kill you again? To which he had answered:
No promises, but I’m trying to keep myself off her hit list.
Suddenly, a crash came from the direction of the kitchen, followed by a shout of, “Give me the bottle, Jude!”
There was another bang, and Sebastian shot the other three boys a concerned look. The only responses he got were confused shrugs before their attention turned back to the commotion in the kitchen.
“No!” Jude exclaimed. “I’m not going to let you do any harm to your unborn child!”
“The test literally said I wasn’t pregnant!”
“But the test could be wrong!”
“Oh, just give me the bottle!”
“No!”
“Hand it over!”
“Make me!”
“Oh, I’ll make you, all right.”
There was a short, high-pitched yelp and a loud thud. “You bitch,” Jude gasped, his voice at least an octave higher. “That hurt!”
“You asked for it, sweetie, and I gave it to you. Now, are you going to hand over the wine like a good boy, or do you want another dose of? carpe scrotum?”
“God, take the bottle!”
Seconds later, a triumphant Taliana strode out of the kitchen with two bottles of wine in hand. She tossed one to Michael who caught it with ease, while she took the other one back to her seat.
“Mission accomplished,” she announced, collapsing on the couch. “Now, are we going to sit here all night and do nothing, or are we going to have some fun?”
“I mean, we’ve got all this wine, so how about a game of
In Vino Veritas
?” Michael offered.
In Vino Veritas, Latin for “truth in wine,” was a game the boys had invented back in seventh grade when Michael had first discovered the code to his parents’ locked wine cellar. It was the equivalent to Truth or Dare, minus the dare part, and the questions were asked under the influence of wine. In every round, each person had to chug from the bottle and answer whatever had been asked. Usually by the eighth or ninth round-or fifth in Marcus’s case, he was almost as cheap of a drunk as Taliana-it got harder to lie. The truth always made its way out.
“No way,” Marcus protested, his eyes widening slightly. “Last time we played I ended up admitting I still watched
My Little Pony .”
Taliana let out a loud laugh, though she quickly apologized to Marcus before saying, “I’m totally in.”
Sebastian sat back as Michael explained the rules, and the game began. Jude had flat-out refused to play before storming off in protest of Taliana’s drinking, and it took a little convincing to get Marcus to participate, but he soon gave in and chugged from the bottle before passing it around. Michael had taken it upon himself to begin the first round and scanned the players’ faces.
“All right, ladies,” he drawled, eyes flickering. “What’s your favorite color?”
“Blue,” Sebastian answered automatically.
“Orange,” came from Jacob.
Marcus thought about it for a moment. “Green, I guess.”